To an extent the same is probably true of Yastrzemski. Great hitters from the '60s - and these guys were both truly elite hitters - still didn't put up the eye-popping numbers of good hitters from the '30s, '90s, or 2000s. Do I think Jimmie Foxx was a better hitter than Frank Robinson or Yaz? Probably a little bit. But not a lot. Maybe not better than Robby at all. Do I think Jim Thome or Ken Griffey Jr were better hitters than those guys? No way. Thome in particular I actually think gets regularly underrated relative to other hitters from the same era, but still...

Thanks for saying so dahsdebater. While I might put Foxx a notch higher above Yaz or F.Robinson that you put him, I fully agree about the Thomes and Griffey - the latter was himself a great player. But as you say, the performance in the context of the 60s stands out.

Frank Robinson was MVP in both leagues and at a time when Mays, Aaron, Mantle and a whole of other all time greats played.

Yaz in 1967 did more to carry a whole team into the World Series than any other individual player I can think of.

Griffey was great, but I cannot imagine him doing that. And though health issues and injuries interfered with what else he might have done, he did play in both leagues and was not Frank Robinson.

jeff1964, I hear you. But when I was growing up, and maybe this is a problem with being a Yankees fan, where as someone has said, the real competition is not with other teams so much as with previous Yankees history, I had the impression that there were few contemporary players who could stand in the same league with Ruth, Cobb, Dimaggio, Hornsby etc. It was almost a "descent of man" approach, each generation seeming just a little weaker than the ones before.

This is not how I see things now of course, but that is what it looked like at the time. Only more recently do I see how good "modern" players have been, yet the trend toward seeing more recent players as superior (I have good friends, closer baseball watchers than I who think this) has taken a hit with the steroids issue, which has now brought the opposite idea of constant progress into question as well.

It is more fun to now have to really work it out without being able to either a) assume Ruth and the early players were automatically giants compared to current players or b) that Barry Bonds and company leave all the previous generations of players in their dust.

How good have the shortstops of the past 20 years been compared with the generation of the 1930s or 1940s?

Who is Griffey comparable to historically ?

What baseball critics of past decades made inane comments like those of boogerlips?

How good have the shortstops of the past 20 years been compared with the generation of the 1930s or 1940s? The move toward good-bat SSs in the early 1980s makes it tough to compare. All-arund SS in the 30s and 40s who had sustained offensive success were rare — Boudreau, Appling, Cronin, Vaughan is about the extent of it over two decades. 1990-2010 had Nomar, A-Rod, Jeter, Larkin, Ripken and a bunch of others with shorter peaks. Statistically, Vaughan is the only one with comparable sustained offense, and given the difference in pitching quality even that is dubious. Given the overall trend in athleticism over the years, it also seems unlikely that anyone in the pre-integration days and into the late 60s at least had anything close to the pure defensive skill of Ozzie Smith and a few others.

Who is Griffey comparable to historically? Maybe Mantle? If either had full careers with good health, either could have been in the running for G.O.A.T. Seven straight (healthy) seasons hitting over .300 in the Kingdome with power, speed and defense is impressive.

What baseball critics of past decades made inane comments like those of boogerlips? Joe Morgan, on days when his meds were off.

How about Bonds? Yes he juiced. So didnt a crap-load of the other players too. His numbers across the board were awesome. Against other people who were juicing too. Probably a bunch of pitchers who didnt get caught.

Now, I'm not saying he was the greatest, but he was pretty awesome in the 90's. Always seemed to be overlooked by Griffey, McGwire, Sosa. Depending on what you read, thats why/when he started juicing.

Drawing a line at 1999, look at his #'s. 100+ runs scored a season. 35 hr's a season, 100+ rbi's a season. 30+ sb's a season. 100+ bb's a season. Less than 90 k's a season. (which meant something back then) Around a .300/.415/.575 career line. 3 mvp's. 8 GG's He was a HOF right then and there.

Not sure someone can be underrated when he spent his first decade being hailed as the potential great Bonds was. Questioning how much of his late-30s success was because of the juice is different from saying he wasn't a great hitter. When you look at his video-game numbers at an age when every hitter outside the steroid era rapidly faded, saying drugs helped is not underrating him. Outside the steroid era, power hitters almost without exception went downhill more like Rice and Mays. Whatever backlash there was is fully deserved for someone who wasn't content to just be one of the all-time greats. Pity that we don't know what he could have done with 5-6 more years of athleticism instead of becoming the Incredible Hulk.

2) the juice Bonds took is underrated, since as bottomlee points out his juice out-juiced McGwire, Sosa's and the rest of the juicers' juice.

3) the Incredible Hulk is under-rated. Did you see that scene in the Avengers where he stops that big flying snake ship all by himself?

4) Bonds really was very great without the steroids and didn't need them.

5) His being African American is a part of why he gets more flak than others for having taken steroids, though part of it is that McGwire, Sosa and some others were mostly or entirely done with their careers when the public started to pay attention and when it became undeniable. If A-Rod had hit 80 homers on steroids after Bonds retired, he would be the player most identified with the scandal, and indeed, being more recent and even making a "comeback" now (sigh) he is increasingly the "face" of steroids.